Mac stopped accessing internal and external CD drives

[primeevolutionary]

I've been on Mojave for a while, so, it's not just due to my switch to Mojave. I believe that I've been on 10.14.6 for a while too, but, I don't remember that for a fact.

I have a Mid 2010 Mac Pro 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon. I've upgraded the graphics card for Mojave. I have 7 internal drives, 4 external drives, an internal optical CD/DVD drive and an external Blu-ray drive. The main drive is SSD. All other drives are HDs.

Symptoms: Within the last week, I no longer see prerecorded CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs that are inserted into the drives in Finder, or, iTunes, or, other programs. In Disk Utility, they show up as if unmounted. If I try to mount, or, eject them, I get a message that they cannot be ejected because they are in use by another program. This happens even when I have had no other programs open and have restarted only with Disk Utility open.

Other symptoms, some of the hard drives aren't always appearing. The four that are in the Bays of the computer are always showing, the four external drives are always showing. The three drives that are hardwired into the shell of the computer (not easily removable) sporadically show up.

Today, my MOTU 896s, connected by FireWire stopped showing up today.


Things I've tried: I've reset the SMC, I've reset NVRAM, I've First Aided the main drive and tried to manipulate the CD drives with Disk Utility. I've used the Terminal in recovery Mode to try to boot the CD drives (diskutil mount <name of drive>). I've tried these things in Recovery Mode (I'm not able to boot into Safe Mode). I've unplugged everything.

One of the hardwired drives has an OS on High Sierra. When I boot from that drive, I have access to everything. Unfortunately, it's not my old system drive, so, I can't just use that drive. None of my authorizations are on that drive.


Does this sound like an OS issue, a failing SSD, or, some kind of virus behavior, or,...?

Any help would be appreciated.

Joe

[mhschmieder]

I remember this happening A LOT on Mojave; have rarely had it happen on Catalina except in weird circumstances that I actually suspect are caused by Roland Cloud Manager. But I could be wrong about the cause.

[primeevolutionary]

Thank you for your reply. I believe that my computer won’t run Catalina, so, I may be out of luck. I don’t have the Roland Cloud Manager. I do appreciate your input though. Have a great weekend!

Joe

[mikehalloran]

Turn everything off. Burnish the connections by unplugging and reconnecting each cable at least three times. Boot and see if y still have a problem.

[mikehalloran]

If it's the original Superdrive, they do burn out after 8–10 years or so. Fortunately, USB bus powered drives can be had in the $20–30 range on Amazon.

https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=cd%2Fdvd+b ... -doa-p_4_6

[primeevolutionary]

Thank you, Mike. That is one of the things I’ve tried.

The internal CD/DVD drive is an original Superdrive, but, it’s also happening on the external Blu-ray drive, sporadic loss of hard drives (though those don’t seem to be permanent) and now loss of connection to my 896s through FireWire and they all are available again when I switch over to my other drive using High Sierra.

I just don’t know if this is a Mojave thing (though I have been on this OS for a while without this problem), a startup drive thing (this doesn’t match a symptom that I’ve read for a failing Solid State Drive, but, is it?), or, something else.

Today, I’m going to try to clone the startup drive and reboot on the clone to see if that will work.

[stubbsonic]

I wonder if it could be related to an OS setting-- about showing externals, removables, or some security setting?

[mikehalloran]

Hmmm... I just remembered. About ten years ago, I lost my FW and USB ports. My iMac was still under AppleCare. I was on he horn with a tech who was going to qualify it for exchange and he had me reset the NV RAM — as I had before I initiated the call. So we did again and again and again. The fourth time, the ports came back and I never ha that problem again. I also never used a FW hub again—apparently it was the cause of this problem on my iMac and the G5 before it.

[stubbsonic]

That's a good thing to add to the notes. If at first, you don't succeed, try, try, try again. Four's a charm. (Just take any saying and add one).

[primeevolutionary]

My FireWire is plugged direct. I logged back into the High Sierra drive and downloaded and installed the latest MOTU Audio driver, then logged back into my Mojave drive. I also then reinstalled my Universal Audio software as resetting the NVRAM messed it up (that was before losing the FireWire - trying resetting the NVRAM hadn't gotten me back to having the FireWire - maybe a few more tries might have worked). Either installing the driver on the HS drive and/or reinstalling the UAD plugins got the FireWire connections to the 896s back online. Still no luck getting the two optical drives back yet. I tried playing CDs on the HS drive and they were working fine. I haven't had a chance yet to close the Mojave drive, but, that will be my next step.

[mikehalloran]

Making sure you didn't skip this. If not done within a half hour, you have to reinstall the drivers and try again.

https://motu.com/techsupport/technotes/ ... igh-sierra

[primeevolutionary]

I didn't skip it, but, I do appreciate you keeping me on my toes.

I didn't install the audio driver on Mojave recently, only on High Sierra today as trouble shooting, but, the High Sierra drive is a different user. I didn't install it this time on Mojave either. Possibly using it to play through the 896s on the High Sierra drive did something for it for when I switched back to the Mojave drive.

[primeevolutionary]

I rebooted with Mojave clone of the system drive and still can't mount the CD drives (one internal and one external). Is this an OS issue? Should I keep trying to zap the NVRAM?

[HCMarkus]

I've read that fully clearing the NVRAM requires allowing the Mac Pro to "bong" four times. If you haven't already, try holding down the required keys on startup until you hear that startup sound four times.

[primeevolutionary]

I’ve done two and three times, but, not four. I’ll give it a try. Thank you, Marcus.